No More Heroes: In the Wake of the Templars Book Three (27 page)

Raena nodded. “I don’t want to give the Business Council another credit. I’ll find a way to get rid of it.”

Ariel looked around at the others. Now that the excitement of the evening had worn off, they all looked exhausted. Raena could see it, too.

“Haoun, do you mind taking the floor?” she asked.

“I’d prefer it.”

“You sleeping in the bed with me?” Ariel asked her.

Raena grinned at her, but said, “Wasn’t planning on it.”

Ariel laughed. “Good. I’m too tired for your shenanigans tonight.”

Raena found an extra pillow and a blanket in the cupboard, then rolled herself up in it and snuggled her back up against Haoun. He put an arm over her, rested his chin on the top of her head, and was asleep before they’d turned out the lights.

Raena smiled and closed her eyes, but she didn’t think she’d get any more sleep tonight. Her thoughts zoomed in too many directions. What she needed was to finish the trial and get off of Kai soon, before she died here. The problem was that now she was responsible for Ariel, the crew of the
Veracity
, the remaining Thallians, and Ariel’s daughter. How could she possibly protect them all?

*   *   *

Raena woke everyone in the morning with her coughing. She sat up, trying to get a grip on it, but the soot in her lungs had decided it was time to get out. She shut herself in the bathroom. The door muffled her coughing only slightly.

Ariel tapped on the door. “If court’s not in session this morning, we’re going to the hospital.”

“All I need is some RespirAll,” Raena argued, “but I’m not taking it if we’re going to court.”

Ariel laughed.

“Have you checked in with the court?” Raena’s voice sounded worse than it had the night before.

“I will,” Ariel promised.

As she came back into the sleeping room, the others were sitting up and blinking. Both Coni’s fur and Mykah’s hair stuck upward at weird angles.

“Mykah, will you order us some breakfast? You know what everyone will like. Charge it to the room and I’ll pick it up.”

“Got it.” He bent over to dig around in the pile of clothes beside the bed to find his comm.

“Coni, will you call the court and find out if we need to get down there this morning?”

The blue girl nodded.

“What do you want me to do?” Haoun asked.

“Take care of Raena. She’ll accept it better from you.”

He crawled up off the floor and headed for the bathroom.

“Get her into the shower,” Ariel suggested. “Both of you need to get the soot off your skin.”

Ariel settled on the end of the bed to try reaching Gisela or Eilif again.

*   *   *

Unsurprisingly, court would not be in session this morning. The courthouse staff was still trying to release or rehouse their prisoners, so the courtrooms were unavailable. To Coni’s surprise, they didn’t even want Raena to present herself until afternoon, if then.

Raena continued to cough in the bathroom. It sounded as if she was having trouble getting her lungs back under control in the humid air of the shower.

“What’s RespirAll?” Coni asked Ariel.

“It’s a medicine designed to help humans breathe unfamiliar atmospheres,” Mykah explained.

“It’s also a truth serum,” Ariel added, “if you get too much. Dosage is really tricky. If you’ve used it before, and Raena has, you’re more susceptible to the side effects.”

“Do you think it would ease her cough?” Coni asked. “I could go see if the hotel can provide some.”

Ariel shook her head. “She needs to go to a hospital. RespirAll isn’t going to clear the soot from her lungs. She needs to get it suctioned out and get some oxygen, but you know how she feels about medical procedures.”

“I’ll go with her,” Coni volunteered.

“She’ll feel better if you would,” Ariel said. “Thank you. You could check on Corvas, too, if he’s still there.”

“Any word from the
Veracity
?” Mykah asked.

“I haven’t been able to get through to any of them yet.” Ariel’s voice shook with worry. “I’m going to try again. Does anyone know if the curfew is lifted yet?”

“I’ll check on it,” Coni promised.

*   *   *

Gisela rolled her eyes open, but it took a moment for her to recognize what she was seeing. She lay on the deck of the
Veracity
, looking across a large puddle of blood.

She put one hand to her head tentatively, trying to ascertain if her brain really was in danger of falling out. Her head pounded, but her skull seemed intact.

Eilif lay across her legs. As Gisela’s vision cleared, she could tell the little woman was dead. Blood ran from her ears, nose, and mouth.

The sound that woke Gisela repeated. She crawled across the deck, leaving a red smear, to slap at the comm button. Then she leaned against the console to fight off a tidal wave of vertigo.

“Answer me,” her mom repeated. “Are you all right?”

“No,” Gisela said. “Eilif’s dead. I’ve got a head injury. Don’t know where Jim is.”

She heard Ariel suck in a deep breath. More calmly than Gisela expected, her mom asked, “Can you stand?”

Gisela used the console to wobble to her feet. “Shaky,” she said.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can. For now, make sure you are safe. Seal up the ship if you’re alone. Are you armed?”

“My gun’s gone. I’ll get something else.”

“Good girl. Call me when you find Jim.”

Gisela didn’t nod because she was afraid to slosh her brain around.

As soon as she stepped out of the cockpit into the passageway, she felt a hot draft blowing through the ship. The main hatch yawned open. She closed and locked it, but she knew Jim was gone.

The gun lockers by the main hatch stood open. In fact, every cubby where Mykah had hidden weapons was empty. Gisela wasn’t sure what that meant, but she knew it was bad.

She searched the ship, dreading to find Jim’s body bleeding out like Eilif’s, but she didn’t. In the process, she’d tracked bloody footprints all over the ship, but she didn’t think she could deal with them herself without blacking out again.

Once she was sure she was alone, she went to the galley to make herself an ice pack and a cup of tea and to wait for her mom to come.

CHAPTER 12

R
aena came out of the shower finally. Her skin had gone a weird reddish shade, like a sunburn beneath her normal coloring. She’d gotten the coughing somewhat under control, though.

She skinned into one of Ariel’s extra dresses, a loose green sundress that hung to her feet. Tricky to fight in, Mykah would have said, although Raena’s boot heels would have helped somewhat. They’d have to retrieve her boots from the
Veracity
later. Until she stopped coughing, though, she didn’t need to be fighting.

Breakfast came while everyone rotated through the shower. Mykah had ordered a spectrum of food: eggs, pastries, crunchy beetles for Haoun, stir-fried vegetables and rice, something that would pass as miso for Raena. She smiled at him gratefully as she settled down over the thermos to eat.

Glancing at her comm bracelet, Coni said, “Oh, the curfew is over now.”

“About time.” Ariel took Raena’s face in her hands and kissed her good and hard. Then she grabbed some of the pastries and headed out the door. Mykah and Coni stared after her, waiting for Raena to let them know if they should worry. She didn’t put her miso down.

“Where’s she going?” Haoun asked.

“To check on her daughter,” Raena rasped.

“Should we worry?” Mykah asked her.

“If she wanted us to worry, she would have said something.”

Mykah shifted, more bothered than Raena appeared to be. It seemed out of character for Ariel not to have told them whether she got through to the
Veracity
or not.

“What should we do about the gray soldiers’ gun?” Coni asked at last.

“Maid cart?” Haoun suggested.

“Don’t get anyone else in trouble,” Raena said. “Is there a trash chute in the hallway? A window to a light well?”

“No, the hotel has concentric circles of rooms,” Mykah said. “The outside circle has balconies and windows. The inside rooms, like this one, don’t have any connection to the outside.”

“Before we dispose of it, we should go clear out Ariel’s other room,” Raena said.

Coni said, “I could hack into the hotel’s security system and see if anyone had been in there.”

Raena nodded. “That’s a good start. It will help us know if they came through the hotel, but not if they came in from the balcony.”

“You think they actually messed with her stuff?” Mykah asked.

“Don’t know. I can’t figure out what they were doing last night.”

*   *   *

When the security video turned out to be clear, Raena led Mykah and Coni upstairs. They let themselves into Ariel’s room, but as far as Coni could tell, it was in the same shape as the night before. Ariel wasn’t one to live in military tidiness, the way Raena did. Clothing and jewelry lay scattered all around the room.

Raena checked the balcony door and poked around halfheartedly. After that she helped collect up Ariel’s stuff briefly, before lying on the bed while Mykah and Coni finished up. Her breathing had gotten more ragged.

“All right?” Mykah asked.

Raena laughed softly. “I think I broke something with the coughing this morning.”

Coni looked at her sharply.

“Kidding,” Raena said.

Coni wasn’t convinced.

On the way back to the elevator, Raena detoured into the room at the end of the hall that housed the vending machines. When she stooped to collect her bottle of water from a machine, she gently unwrapped her skirt from the bulbous gun, placed the gun on the floor, and nudged it under the machine with her toe. The movement would have been too smooth to see, except that Coni had been watching for it.

“What’s the plan for the rest of the day?” Mykah asked.

“Hospital,” Raena rasped.

“I’m coming with you,” Coni said.

“Good.”

They went back down to the other room to drop off Ariel’s stuff. Haoun was waiting to let them in.

“Ariel’s at the
Veracity
,” he said. “Mykah, she wants you to meet her there.”

“Will do.” He gave Coni a big hug, then slipped out the door ahead of them.

*   *   *

Raena found the walk through Kai City eerie, like the morning she had walked in from the underground river. Was the stillness a function of the early hour or had people frightened themselves with the previous night’s rioting and Planetary Security’s enthusiastic response?

In the jail, she’d worried that Haoun, with his head up higher than hers in the smoke, would damage his lungs. Now it hurt to draw a deep breath. The cough didn’t seem to want to leave her alone for long.

She was grateful for Coni and Haoun walking on either side of her, but she knew if it came to a fight, they would be less than no help. She’d seen the limits of Haoun’s bravery, and Coni . . . Well, she knew Coni could run away. For her own part, Raena decided to simply lie down and take her punishment. Last night, the grays had proven how little they cared about collateral damage—but her own surrender might give the others enough time to escape. At this point, she would rather lie down and take a beating than stand up, doubled over and coughing.

The area around the hospital seemed especially quiet. Raena hoped that meant the doctors had processed everyone who’d come in before curfew took effect, so she’d be able to waltz in and waltz out.

The waiting room gave the lie to that. Raena hadn’t known there were so many people on Kai.

Coni gently led the way through the crowd to the intake window. Raena heard her cough echoed throughout the room. The clerk had ceased being sympathetic.

While Coni checked her in, Raena looked over the waiting room. The people looked thoroughly miserable: eyes streaming from smoke, heads aching from Doze gas, completely traumatized by Planetary Security beating them back, compounded by the nightlong wait for treatment. Raena sympathized. She wondered if she could find a little patch of floor to curl up on and pass out.

To placate the people trapped in the waiting room, several screens played news from around the galaxy. One screen showed Raena fighting the Thallians’ soldier in court yesterday. Raena watched herself, noting how she could have done the takedown more elegantly. Just like Corvas’s video of her fight against the Thallian abduction squad, this video counted the amount of time between when the soldier launched himself from the witness stand at her and when the courtroom guards finally stunned him. It took longer than she expected.

After Coni finished the intake process, she occupied herself by making calls on her comm bracelet. Raena leaned against Haoun for support as much as for comfort. The lack of oxygen made her woozy.

A knot of young humans, followed by their disapproving nonhuman chaperones, came to encircle Raena, Haoun, and Coni. Haoun positioned himself protectively in front of Raena. She smiled up at his back, even though he couldn’t see it.

“You’re from the
Veracity
, right?” one of the boys asked eagerly.

Haoun nodded skeptically.